Tour of the Alps 2018 – Stage 3 Preview
By David Hunter
Auer – Meran 138.3km
A proud day for Androni.
It’s not often a team like Androni lead a race with the might of Sky, FDJ and Astana. They will proudly look to defend Sosa’s lead, but will expect to come under fire from the bigger squads.
Climbs
The Mendelpass is a tough old climb, especially the final 6km, which rarely drops below 7%. Similar to the opening stage, this is where teams can blow the peloton apart and turn this into a GC day.
Cresting with 48km would usually see teams happy to set a steady tempo on the climb, but I doubt this will happen with the big teams wanting to expose Androni and isolate the race leader.
The cat 3 climb, Gampenpass, isn’t particularly hard. If you make it over the cat 1 climb, this isn’t going to bother you. From the crest the riders will have 27km to cover, most of this is downhill, but the roads are straight and easy.
Weather
A beautiful day for the peloton.
Tactics
I fear for Androni! Astana have five men sitting within 1:30 of the race leader, that puts them in an incredible strong position. The other teams know what is coming, if Astana have all five in the front group as we descend to the finishing line, they will be unstoppable. Sky and FDJ need to carefully think about their tactics, as they need domestiques for the closing stages.
It is in Astana’s interests to make the cat 1 climb hard and drop the lead group to around 20 riders. They can then dictate the rest of the stage and I would be amazed if they didn’t take the stage win. Ivan Sosa needs to be very careful and not try to cover all the moves, he should let the bigger names do this. They will try and lean on him, but he needs to stay strong.
Froome and Pinot will not allow Lopez or Hirt to go clear, even if Rosa doesn’t respond, their ego will force them into working!
Contenders
Astana – take your pick from Zeits, Bilbao and Sanchez. They are the dominant team and will sense a chance to bring one of these riders into the battle for the overall title. Lopez doesn’t have the kick on the descent, he will simply follow the wheels in the bunch and hope to see his rivals waste some energy they could need later in the week.
Mark Padun – the youngster really looks like the real deal. We saw him work very hard in Itzulia, just failing to win the KOM jersey, and that form seems to have continued. Outside of Astana, he is the highest ranked domestique and could take advantage of that. Bahrain need to be clever and not simply use him to chase attacks for Pozzovivo, having him just 1:35 behind the leader gives them an advantage over the other teams.
Prediction Time
Has to be Astana. Given the run for home, I think this is one for Luis Leon Sanchez.
David Hunter
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